A Barrel of Christmas, Make Like Monkeys (self-issued)

Apparently I'm way behind the curve with these guys (possibly just one guy), as they've been pushing their mostly Christmas-oriented material onto Soundcloud for a few years now. When you're on Soundcloud, you'll note that the creator(s) also run a podcast called "Weird Christmas." For 2018, they've made a massive dump of all their Christmas-oriented material to the usual download and streaming suspects. The most I've been able to pry loose in the way of biographical information is the tag on Bandcamp that places them in New York City. Adding to the confusion is that, while they've put up about four albums' worth of original songs and a bunch of loose singles, they've also placed a number of the songs from the albums as singles. There's also a bunch of cover tunes and parodies as well. So if, like me, you haven't encountered them before, you're getting a firehose-worth of Christmas goodies this year from just this one act. Musically they're easy to categorize: they sound like a standard suburban white guys rock 'n roll guitar band that was cryogenically preserved in approximately October 1965 and thawed out in the modern age. So whatever Merseyside/London/New Jersey/Southern California rock influences from the period you care to spot are here for the taking. I'm going to limit myself to reviewing just one collection, since pointing you in the right direction will give you the opportunity to discover as much of the music as you care to. A Barrel of Christmas kicks off nicely with "New Christmas," with an intro reminiscent of "Eight Days a Week," "Found Love For Christmas" sounds alternately like the Hollies, the Beatles and the Byrds, "Don't Let Christmas Come Without You Girl" is a hand-clapper that would have fit nicely on the new Monkees Christmas album, "A Winter's Carol" is a folk ballad that will remind you of Chad & Jeremy, "Happy Holiday, I Just Wanna Play" has just a touch of New Vaudeville Band to it, "Santa Claus Is Dead" is an almost garage-y bit of snark about a bad Christmas, "4-3-2-1 Christmas" has hints of "Drive My Car" in it, "Another Holiday" is a straight guitar ballad, "I Love You Jingle Bells" might be a Gerry and the Pacemakers outtake, and "Some Sort of Merry Christmas" is the one tune from this collection that doesn't feel like it has some sort of obvious antecedent, although it's definitely more of the same pre-power-pop as the other songs. The other three albums are Christmas With Make Like Monkeys, Joyeux Noel!, and Let the Season Begin, and there's an EP, 5 Christmas', along with more singles than I can count. I'm quite impressed with all these tunes, although I will note that in a number of cases some familiar tunes have been, shall we say, sampled to create new songs, but that's nothing new in the modern era. It's definitely worth clearing a spot in your calendar to check out Make Like Monkeys.